


Waking Up Slow

by writergirl8



Series: 30 Minute Fics [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: College Years, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, I just heard Delicate from Taylor's new album and started crying over Lydia and this happened, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Canon, There's No Point To This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 23:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12692214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: It's a little bit clearer now, I love you like the sun came out.





	Waking Up Slow

**Author's Note:**

> Idk, Taylor Swift's new album gave me Lydia feels and I had to write something. There's no point or plot. It's just them talking on the phone. You can expect a fic at some point based on the line "we can't make any promises, now can we babe? but you can make me a drink" from Delicate because...... yeah, that's happening. 
> 
> If you don't read this you will be missing literally nothing in your life, I kinda just wrote it for my feels, so enjoy if you wanna.
> 
> Title and summary from waking up slow by Gabrielle Aplin goodbye I'm off to cry over Stydia

Stiles’ phone goes off way before his alarm is supposed to. 

 

At first he thinks it’s time to get up, and the groan of protest that rumbles through him starts all the way at the bottom of his chest. Rolling from his back to his stomach, he grabs for his cell phone with his eyes closed, grunting in annoyance when it takes him a few tries to finally grip it. 

 

His thumb is about to hit where he assumes the snooze button to be when it occurs to him that this isn’t the alarm he’d set. Instead, it’s the steady, pulsing vibrations of the custom ringtone that Lydia had set for him, tapping her thumb determinedly across the screen, trying to get a good rhythm for them. 

 

“Hey, babe,” Stiles says sleepily, shoving the phone between his ear and his pillow. “Why are you awake?”

 

He’d gone to bed early— 2:30am, thank you very much— and he feels too exhausted to have gotten much sleep. It can’t be much later than four. And Lydia wakes up early on some days to go to the gym, but not  _ this  _ early. She’s a banshee, not a sociopath. 

 

“Hi.” On the other end of the line, the crackly voice is filled with relief. “Stiles. Hi.” 

 

The tone of her voice is one that he knows well, so Stiles finally wrenches both of his eyes open and turns onto his back again, burrowing under the covers so that he’s cozier. 

 

“You okay?” he asks, concerned, and then, without waiting for her to answer, keeps talking. “I’m in my room. In my dorm. Wearing the Captain Marvel pajama bottoms Scotty got me last Christmas. I’m safe in my bed. I’m not gone. I’m right here.” 

 

He can hear her breathing slow over the phone; hear everything get softer, quieter. Somehow, he feels the tension release from his shoulders as she accepts his words. He knows the drill right now— she’s weighing the truth of his statement against the desperate thumb of her frightened heart. She’s weighing the reality of his voice against the harsh cruelty of her vivid dreams. She’s weighing their history in her head, remembering all the moments they’ve had together as she becomes acclimated to the version of reality in which he is hers and she is his. 

 

“Okay,” Lydia breathes out, and he aches for her. Moves his foot over so that it’s all the way across the mattress, and he can pretend that it’s right next to her cold toes under the covers in his bed at home. He doesn’t feel warm without Lydia’s cold anymore. She’s become an integral part of his homeostasis, and she’s hours away in an apartment in Cambridge right now. “Sorry.” 

 

“You don’t have to apologize,” he says, yawning. Now that he’s not on high-alert anymore, he feels sleepy again. But, still, being on the phone with Lydia is better than not being on the phone with her. Resolving himself to stay awake, Stiles puts his phone on speaker and places it on his pillow, right next to his ear. If he turns it up loud enough and places it close, it’s almost as if she’s here. It’s almost like he can hear the notes and strains in her voice that are an effect of being so incredibly powerful. “You wanna talk about it?”

 

Lydia sighs. 

 

“It’s the same thing as it always is.” 

 

“I’m gone.” 

 

“I can’t save you. I can’t talk to you.” 

 

“And now you’re  _ sick  _ of talking to me,” he teases. 

 

“Never.” She’s so fond, and it makes his heart yearn for her, even though he shouldn’t miss her when he is talking to her. It’s just something he’s had to get used to. 

 

“I’m gonna remind you of that next time I say something stupid.” 

 

“Why? I’ll still remember it in five minutes.” 

 

He guffaws out loud, rubbing his hand from his eye to the scruff on his cheek. 

 

“I’m never gonna get sick of talking to you either,” Stiles tells Lydia sincerely. 

 

It seems like nothing, but it’s not. He remembers when she used to be panicked about committing herself to anyone, when she shied away from being loved, when she had felt certain that he would eventually grow tired of her and leave. It wasn’t that long ago, after all. He can remember how much it hurt when Lydia would distance herself from him even when they could finally be honest with each other. It’s burned into his brain, the fact that she had hit a point where she loved him so much, she was genuinely afraid he would stop loving her. 

 

One of the hardest parts of growing up has been realizing that it’s nothing he’d done, nothing he’d said. It’s just the way Lydia had learned about what it was like to love someone— they leave. They go away eventually. And maybe there’s something safe in her being afraid of losing him, because it means she doesn’t  _ want  _ to. But he likes it better like this, these quiet moments two years into their relationship when it all feels kinda new but also feels so fuckin’ old-hat. Like, yeah, he’s dating Lydia Martin. Yeah, he loves her. Yeah, they cuddle and they fight and they fuck and they have full-on conversations while one or both of them are taking a shower. Duh, all that is theirs. Obviously. 

 

It’s so normal, feeling like she’s the only person in the world who owns any part of him. It’s so natural to guard her pieces with his hands and his eyes and the cracked skin on his lips. 

 

“How many days until M-Day?” he asks. Lydia laughs over the phone. 

 

“Only two-hundred and eighty-nine.” 

 

“Ughhhh.” He groans, half-teasing, half-genuinely frustrated. “Banshees can’t speed time up, right? We established that? We got there?”

 

“Uh-uh. And before you ask, we can’t graduate college earlier either. Two years is early enough, thanks.”

 

Stiles laughs because she always makes him laugh despite the fact that Lydia rarely ever actively makes jokes. She just says things, they’re dry and they’re funny and they drive a hole in his heart that she fills by her hand slipping into his. 

 

“Do you ever think about how weird it is that we’re gonna do something that we’ve never done before?”

 

“So, I’m still on the  _ other  _ side of that thought process.”

 

He rubs a hand lazily over his stomach, smiling at the ceiling. 

 

“Like, we’ve never lived together before. We’ve never had to share a bathroom, or, like a fridge, or a closet.”

 

“I’m assuming you’re going to need a whole wall for your flannels.” 

 

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to throw out some of your clothes to make room.”

 

“It is weird,” Lydia says softly. 

  
“You throwing out your stuff? Yeah. Packrat.” 

 

“No, us doing something that we’ve never done before. You’re right. We met in kindergarten. There isn’t much we haven’t seen.” 

 

“Are you scared?”

 

He whispers it as though saying it quietly won’t startle her into panic. 

 

“Mmm.” She thinks about it for a moment. “Not really, I don’t think.” 

 

There’s a small pause between the two of them. 

 

“I don’t know why that surprises me.”

 

“I do.” 

 

“Why, then?”

 

“Because I think it means….” She hesitates. Breathes in a little heavily. “I think it means I’ve stopped waiting for you to fall out of love with me.” 

 

It’s cold in his dorm room, and he can see his breath in the air as he shakily breathes out. 

 

“This is it, isn’t it?”

 

He’s hushed. Reverential. 

 

“I think so,” Lydia whispers back. 

 

“Okay,” Stiles says, and it’s simple. Just that. It’s okay. 

 

“Okay,” agrees Lydia. 

 

They fall asleep on the phone with each other. They fall asleep safe.  


End file.
